Algeria - - Equipe FLN - History and Matches

Algeria - overview international results
The Algerian national team was formed in clandestine circumstances
in 1958 when Mohamed Boumezrag, a leader of a section of the Front
de Libération Nationale (National Liberation Front) of Algeria based
in metropolitan France, returned from the 1957 World Youth Festival.
Using the contacts he had made during the tournament, Boumezrag
recruited ten of the best-known French-based Algerian professional
players to secretly leave the country and go to Tunisia where the
Algerian national team was formally established on April 13. The
world football governing body FIFA later announced after protest
from the French Football Federation, that any team that played the
Algerians would be expelled from the World Cup, while the French
government succeeded in arresting other players who tried to leave
the country to join the team. Despite these obstacles, the Algerian
FLN team played 91 matches over the next four years and helped win
international recognition for the Algerian struggle for independence.

Ambassadors of the Algerian Revolution

Two months before the beginning of the 1958 World Cup in Sweden,
30 professional players in the French league left l'Hexagone in
successive waves to join the FLN. A grand gesture from the founders
of the future Algerian national team.

The idea to create this revolutionary team, which would become the
ambassadors of Algeria until the end of the war in 1962, was born
in 1957 with the return of Mohamed Boumezrag from the World Youth
Festival in Moscow. Holding up the green and white flag, a football
team had represented Algerian sports at the event. Boumezrag had
remembered that, a few years back on November 1, 1954, a team of
North African players had beaten France by 3 goals to nil in a
benefit match organised for the victims of the Orléansville earthquake
(a city now known as Ech-Cheliff), which had killed 1,460 people two
months earlier. The select team included Moroccan duo Larbi Ben Barek
and defender Abderrahman Mahjoub and Algerians Mokhtar Arribi,
Said Brahimi and Abderrahmane Boubekeur.

With Mokhtar Arribi, the trainer of Avignon, Abdelaziz Bentifour,
Doctor Moulay, who organised the Algerian students, and Mohamed Maouche
of Stade Reims who was also pre-selected for the World Cup started
to develop the operational departure for Tunis. At the beginning,
the plan set up by the FLN was meticulous and without any faults,
in diverting all the police monitoring systems. Thus, after the
contacts undertaken by Arribi and Boumezrag, all the steps were
taken by all, one by one in forecast of the "departure" which was
planned for Monday April 12, 1958. A rigorous monitoring of the
players was established as it was during the period of the assimilation
of "French-Muslims" preached by the presidents of the French clubs.
Monitoring their movements, contacts, and rigorous border checks,
however without any conclusive results. Ten players found themselves
in Tunis and constituted the heart of the FLN team.
Two groups of players were to leave France at the same hour but from
different borders. The Northern group was composed of Abdelhamid
Kermali, Mokhtar Arribi, Abdelhamid Bouchouk,
Rachid Mekhloufi
and Said Brahimi all at the Swiss border. The second group that went
by the French-Italian border included Abderrahmane Boubekeur,
Mustapha Zitouni,
Abdelaziz Bentifour, Kaddour Bekhloufi and Amar Rouaï.
Monaco’s Bentifour, who said he was sick to miss his club’s match
with Angers in which he was named as substitute against Angers, left
first for San Remo in Italy on Friday. Two days later, the three
other Monaco players left with Rouaï for Rome. By Monday, they would
be the first five Algerian footballers to landing at Tunis Airport.
The five men were met up in Tunis where they were joined by four other
players who would pass through Switzerland, after a hitch, as Mekhloufi
was hospitalised in Saint-Etienne. The player had been injured on Sunday
April 13th in the last minute of his club’s 2-1 loss to Béziers, a match
in which he scored his team’s only goal in the 80th minute. He had
collided with team-mate Eugène Njo Léa and was sufferring from concussion,
he spent 36 hours in hospital.

It is on the way towards the border that they learn that their escape is
known to people in France. They managed to get to Switzerland but
forget to meet Maouche who was in Lausanne and without any information
on the departed player, he decided to return to Paris, there he learns
that his friends have gone. He tries to return to Switzerland but was
stopped and imprisoned. The incident will not prevent him from continuing
to organise the departure of other players by November 2, 1958, there were
30 in Tunis.

"Footballers of the Revolution"

After the overcoming the difficulties and obstacles in Switzerland and
Italy, the players finally arrived to Tunis and were joined later by
Mohamed Maouche who had been arrested after being charged and imprisoned
for three months. Two groups of players later joined the first in 1959
and 1960, and all together they would carry the torch of the Algerian
Revolution by defending the colours of the their nation.

From Africa to Far East Asia, the national anthem "Kassamen" would be
sang out loud with the ‘green and red emblem’ and ‘the red crescent and
the star’ known to the people of the world. The French Football Federation
asked the world football governing body FIFA to stop the FLN matches but
the team continued playing.

The technical director of the team was former Red Star player Mohamed
Boumezrag and the training was carried out by 34 year-old Arribi in a
player-coach role and Abdelaziz Bentifour and later by former Marseille
duo Abderrahmane Ibrir and Said Haddad. The first official match of the
national team of the FLN was against the great Tunisian national team,
who were finalists in the Pan-Arab Games in Beirut a year before, the
result was a surprising one for the observers... 8-0 to the Greens!
The Algerian national team was born, thanks to Boubekeur, Zitouni,
Rouaï, Bekhloufi, Maouche, Arribi, Bentifour, Brahimi, Mekhloufi,
Bouchouk and Kermali.. Who revealed the true potential of Algerian
football and become the traveling ambassadors of Algeria. From Belgrade
to Hanoi while passing through Prague, Sofia, Bucharest, Peking,
Baghdad... they did wonders... with the ball!

Against Yugoslavia, they had a "revolutionary" win, 6-1 in favour of
the Algerians. In Vietnam where the team played several matches,
the Algerian sportsmen were received by President Ho Chi Minh. While
in China, the team met Prime Minister of the People’s Republic Chou En-Lai.
In Baghdad, the Iraqi fans went delirious as they invaded the pitch
"Congratulations to those who succeeded by the means of sports to
tarnish the image of colonial France..." declared the Baghdadis.

And it is at the time of the FLN-Iraq match which was held in Baghdad
in February 1959, that for the first time, the Algerian flag was
hoisted and their national anthem ‘Kassaman’ was sung. Invited to
attend the match, was the ambassador of France who had hastily left
before the game as a sign of protest. It was one memorable day, as the
team of the FLN had affirmed the colours of the national team of
Algeria. That day, the mudjahidine-footballers represented their
nation with dignity, as they beat the Iraqi team 3-0.

Iraq’s star midfielder Edison Eshay recalls the build up to the event
and the game itself. "I remember when we heard that the Algerian team
was coming to Baghdad, we knew that in the team there were professional
players from the French league. I remember we prepared hard to meet
this challenge. I remember it was one of my best games, we played the
best we could, but we could not stop the Algerian players. I also remember
Jamoli, our captain & center back played one of his best games. If
you think about it, thats about 50 years ago. To me it’s like it was
yesterday!! I also know that they were received by the Iraqis like
heroes. The fans went crazy that day!

"Ten Muslim professional footballers are reported missing",
announce the French media.

On April 15, 1958, French football fans awoke to the news to the
headlines at the newsstands. L’Equipe: " Nine Algerien footballers
disappear."

At the time, fifty-three professional footballers playing in D 1
and D 2 were of Algerian origin, nine were among the best in France,
their defection to Algeria shocked French fans.

French newspaper Paris-Match devoted a special part to Mustapha Zitouni,
the pillar of the Monaco defence and France, who was to play on
Wednesday in a friendly match against Switzerland in preparation
for the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. His absence was a big loss to Les
Bleus. Like fellow Algerian Rachid Mekhloufi, champion of France
in 1957 with Saint-Etienne, another player included in the French
squad. After the news of their defection, L’Equipe: had this comment:
"France L’équipe remains, even if the word France takes a more narrow
meaning." A few days before "the escape" from France, Paul Nicolas,
the national coach of France, who qualified for the World cup in Sweden,
named a list of 40 players pre-selected to form part of the "22" leaving
for Stockholm. On the list appeared the best central defender in the
French league, the Algerian Mustapha Zitouni and his compatriot Rachid
Mekhloufi, considered by many as the best playmaker in France. These
two players were to play for France against Switzerland on Wednesday
April 16 at Parc des Princes (The game ended 0-0). The news of their
disappearance spread around the world from the radio waves to the TV
screens, its effect was like a bomb: Ten Muslim professional players
were reported missing. Among them were four internationals - Abdelaziz
Bentifour, Mustapha Zitouni, Rachid Mekhloufi and Mohamed Maouche - who
played for Nice, Monaco, Saint-Etienne and Stade Reims, respectively.
On April 14, 1958, France learnt about the strange disappearance of
Rachid Mekhloufi of AS Saint-Etienne, a player who had helped France
qualify for the World Cup and was one of the 40 pre-selected for the
championship in Sweden, along with Mustapha Zitouni, Abderrahmane
Boubekeur, Abdelaziz Bentifour and Kaddour Bekhloufi, all four from
Monaco, Amar Rouaï of Angers, Stade Reims player Mohamed Maouche,
Abdelhamid Bouchouk and Saïd Brahimi of Toulouse and Abdelhamid
Kermali of l'Olympique Lyonnais.

The 10 Algerian players who had decided to travel to Tunis where the
provisional Government of the Algerian Republic ‘Gouvernement provisoire
de la République algérienne’ (GPRA) was installed, left promising
careers behind them.
"I did not hesitate" declared Rachid Mekhloufi, the star of the FLN
team.
Mekhloufi was a world-class footballer. "It was very quickly clear",
says Jean Snella, his coach at AS Saint-Etienne and Servette in Switzerland.
"He was one of these athletes made for football. He was able by his
intelligence and his tricky, to draw in his opponent on false tracks.

"To create the unexpected, that he has, is the secret of great footballers.
Mekhloufi is the King of the unexpected", confirms Robert Herbin,
a former team-mate.
"You know, people’s reasons today in terms of career, accolades and
money... The World Cup, of course, I thought of it, but it was
nothing compared to the independence of my country " Mekhloufi adds.

The FLN did not know about the initiative at first. The L’Armee de
libération nationale (ALN) already had their own football team made
up of amateurs playing in Tunis. However, Ferhat Abbas, president of
the GPRA, would very quickly understand the importance of a team which
would represent the nation abroad. "The image of people fighting for
their independence", the team of the FLN which would be covered with
glory between 1958 and 1962 playing 91 matches, with 65 victories,
13 draws and 13 defeats, scoring 385 goals and conceding 127.

"The Algerian authorities", Mekhloufi tells France Football,
"had not thought that we could create a competitive team on a
world stage. At the beginning, it acted above all as a political
act... But we played against selections of several cities that
resembled like two water drops to the national teams. I remember
that we beat Yugoslavia 6-1. An exploit which marked the spirits. "

Maouche also remembers: "With the passing of time, I can say
that none among us have regrets... We were militants, we were
revolutionists. I fought for independence... They were beautiful
years."

Its not surprising that the first president of the independent
Algerian republic was himself a footballer. Ahmed Ben Bella, one
of the founders of the FLN once played for Olympique Marseille,
making his first and only appearance for the famous club on April
21, 1940, scoring one of 9 goals in a win over FC Antibes.

From May 1961, things started to turn up-side down for the team.
The war raged making it impossible for football to be played. It
was proposed to some that the players take up arms before they a
re sent for their last round of matches in Libya. Certain players
wished to return to their clubs, most joined Tunisian clubs as amateurs.
The war ended in March 1962, independance was declared on July 5, 1962,
bringing joy and relief to the players. Oualiken, Bouchouk, Bentifour,
Kermali, Zitouni, Bekhloufi, Boubekeur and several others from the old
FLN team returned to Algeria as players and coaches to develop the
talent in Algeria.

Players like Mohamed Soukhane, Said Amara and Ahmed Oudjani returned
to their professional clubs in France. Rachid Mekhloufi and Mohamed
Maouche went to Switzerland, Mekhloufi represented for Servette,
while Maouche was appointed player coach of FC Martigny.

Mekhloufi later returned to France and won the Etienne club their
second league title in 1964 (the first was in 1957 with Mekhloufi
the star of the side). The team had suffered from the Algerian’s
absence while he was with the FLN team, he later captained Saint-Etienne
to the French Cup in 1968. 12 years later, he would coach his country
at the 1982 World Cup in Spain, where they beat West Germany 2-1
and Chile 3-2 as they narrowly missed out on a place in the second
round.